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Daily Slop – 18 Jun 25 – NFL analyst says 2024 Commanders were the luckiest team he’s ever studied

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A collection of articles, podcasts & tweets from around the web to keep you in touch with the Commanders, the NFC East, the NFL and sports in general, and a sprinkling of other stuff

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Washington Post (paywall)

Can the Commanders match last season? It might depend on luck.

Washington’s breakout year contained plenty of good fortune. An NFL data scientist has the numbers to prove it.

The biggest reason for a dose of pessimism…might be luck. The Commanders’ breakout season included a lot of good fortune the team can’t necessarily count on again.

This goes deeper than the Hail Mary. It goes deeper than Washington’s record in one-score games: 9-4, the sixth-best winning percentage in the league. And it goes deeper than injuries, as Washington finished as the NFL’s fifth-healthiest team by the metric “adjusted games lost,” which attempts to quantify the significance of each.

The good luck is perhaps best captured by a “luck dashboard” created by NFL data scientist Tom Bliss and published on the league’s website.

Bliss identified four key scenarios where “teams benefit from actions in a game that are almost entirely derived from opponent performance or lucky bounces” and measured their impact with win probability.

1. An opponent drops a pass on offense.

2. An opponent drops an interception on defense.

3. An opponent misses a kick.

4. Either team recovers a fumble.

By the metric, the 2024 Commanders were the luckiest team since at least the 2022 season, when Bliss started tracking this. It isn’t close, either.

“We have found no correlation for this luck metric from season to season,” Bliss wrote in an email. “Thus, every team individually (including the Commanders) should expect to have a net win probability via luck of 0” going into next season.

The Commanders excelled in one-score games because the coaches prepared them the right way, players argued, and they believe the team’s improved health is at least partly because of increased investment from ownership.

Andrew Wylie said, “[A] lot of winning-time moments went our way because we practiced them every day.”

“I feel like there’s absolutely a component of luck, but I also think that the most well-prepared teams are the luckiest,” guard Nick Allegretti said.

“Do you believe in luck?” a reporter asked center Tyler Biadasz.

“I believe in 5,” he responded, referring to quarterback Jayden Daniels.

The numbers say the Commanders probably won’t get as lucky as they did last season. The players aren’t so sure it was luck in the first place.

Stadium Rant

Ben Sinnott: Grit From The Rink To The Gridiron

Hockey Background

Sinnott originally hails from Waterloo, Iowa. He didn’t just play football in high school; he lettered in golf, baseball, tennis, and track at Columbus Catholic High School. He was also an incredible hockey player. Sinnott began playing hockey when he was three years old and credits the sport for teaching him how to be physically aggressive. Although his high school didn’t have a hockey team, he played on a combined Waterloo team all four years, scoring a whopping 130 goals and recording 206 points.

Sinnott also enjoyed being physical on the ice, recording 365 penalty minutes (PIM) over his high school career, where he averaged 4.4 PIM per game in his senior year. What a beauty.

Sinnott, who was listed at 6’4 220lbs (probably about 6’7 on skates) in HS, is the reason why youth hockey coaches tell players not to cut to the middle of the ice with their head down in a high school hockey game:

Commanders.com

Jordan Magee showing ‘great call command’ of defense

Fifth-round pick Jordan Magee was one of several rookies who looked like he was going to be an early contributor for the Washington Commanders during last year’s training camp. He was getting reps with the starting defense, and head coach Dan Quinn said the former Temple Owl had “rare quickness.”

Magee’s rookie season was upended a few days later. He had a procedure on his knee that forced him to miss half of the 2024 campaign with most of his snaps coming on special teams. After a solid offseason, he and his coaches are hoping this year’s camp will go better than the last.

“I’m really hopeful that he can stay healthy,” defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. said of Magee. “He’s been showing great call command.”

Podcasts & videos

EXCLUSIVE 1-on-1 MEDIA DAY Interview w/ Jeremy Reaves | Command Center | Washington Commanders | NFL

Picking the Top 10 Offenses for the 2025 Season! | The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny

NFC East links

Big Blue View

Kayvon Thibodeaux not giving up chase for Michael Strahan’s sack record

Kayvon Thibodeaux has always had big goals, and the New York Giants edge defender has never been shy to tell anyone about them.

As a rookie, the No. 5 overall pick in the 2022 NFL Draft said he wanted to “average at least one sack a game or contribute five to 10 tackles a game.” That would have been 17 sacks and at least 85 tackles.

For the past couple of seasons, Thibodeaux has made in clear that he wants the single-season sack record, currently shared by T.J. Watt and former Giants great and Hall of Famer Michael Strahan at 22.5. The best Thibodeaux has done is 11.5 sacks in 2023.

On Tuesday, Thibodeaux did not shy away from his quest for the record.

When I asked him about numerical goals for the 2025 season, Thibodeaux said this:

“More than I ever had. Every time I come out on the field, I want to have more sacks than I ever had, more tackles than I ever had and whatever I got to do to help the team. So yeah. I’m still going for the record, I’m going to go for the record every year.”

NFL league links

Articles

NFL.com

John Lynch on 49ers’ ‘uneasy’ offseason: ‘We had to get younger and we had to get a little cheaper’

“Even though we kind of warned our fans, I think that’s a tough pill to swallow, even if you hear it’s happening,” Lynch told NBC Sports Bay Area on Monday’s 49ers Talk podcast. “I think it spoke to how good our roster was. We had a lot of talent on it, and we had acquired a lot of talent and accrued a lot of talent.”

The Niners traded Deebo Samuel to Washington and watched guard Aaron Banks, cornerback Charvarius Ward, safety Talanoa Hufanga and linebacker Dre Greenlaw leave in free agency. The losses on defense particularly left gaping holes.

“We had to get younger and we had to get a little cheaper because we had some plans on what we wanted to do with our core and, obviously, our quarterback,” Lynch said. “And there were some twists and turns, but we executed a plan that we needed to, and we’re really excited with the way it all came together.”

Riggo’s Rag

Jaguars reporter says what all Commanders fans already knew about Dyami Brown

Tony Wiggins from the Locked on Jaguars podcast likes what he sees from Brown. He also made a bold prediction that the former third-round selection would be a real difference-maker thanks to his deep-threat ability in head coach Liam Coen’s offense.

“That man can fly and take the top off the defense. (Dyami Brown) had the best year of his career in, like, the last four or five games of his career in Washington. One of the teams he did that against was a team coached on one side of the ball by (Liam Coen). Mark my words. There’s gonna be three or four games this year he’s gonna be their lead receiver, either in yards, or catches, or touchdowns, or all three.”

Tony Wiggins via Athlon Sports

Sound familiar? It should. These were the hopes and claims every offseason surrounding Brown when he was in Washington.

Brown always shone over early workouts and training camp. Unfortunately, he couldn’t put it all together in a competitive setting until it was too late.

It’ll be interesting to see if Brown’s mini-resurgence last season can be sustained or even enhanced. A bigger price tag comes with raised expectations.

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